The Australian Department of Health and Ageing (DHA) has set out to constrain the number of doctors graduating, despite supply shortages which have seen the country poaching medical staff from the developing world.

A Freedom of Information (FoI) request, recently executed on the DHA returned among other documents, the Howard era document labeled C160.

The DHA, under Rudd, censored the release of a portion of that document, claiming that it was contrary to public interest to reveal the information, despite the eight year lapse.

Another FoI was executed on the University of Sydney, which returned another copy of the same DHA document—but this time, without the blacked out text (C170).

By comparing the two, we can see what the DHA was trying to hide, and gain an insight into its current political sensitivities.

"As you know, the Commonwealth is working towards containing the overall numbers of medical students graduating, "

The part after the comma reads,

"while encouraging special initiatives (such as the Medical Rural Bonded Scholarships) to deliver more doctors to rural communities."

A second DHA document, also obtained from the University of Sydney, C175 states:

"As detailed at the time of allocation around 80% of total HECS funded medical places offered at each medical school continue to have no restrictions on where the doctor concerned can work."

The DHA did not return a copy of C175 at all in response to FoI demands.

The work places restrictions on 20% of HECS places add up to as much as $AUD4.4 billion per annum in avoided medical services when running at steady state, according to available Medicare and PBS statistics, which place the costs generated by each graduated doctor at around $12 M.